Three cheers for schmutzie – hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray! – who has designed this beautiful space for me to put my thoughts. What a comforting place to be – I feel like I have just curled up in a nice frothy latte.

She likes to say that she’s a computer geek, but I think she is a poet with HTML.

This shit is really hard to do. I have only figured out how to do this, and this and how to change the background colour (not going to show you that, because she may kick my ass.)

But look at what she can do. Sister really rocks.

And with my two readers as my witness, I promise not to fuck with the HTML code. I swear!

Labels: Schmutzie

I haven’t been to a dance bar in awhile, but found myself at The Numbers Bar this weekend. I was there to support my very awesome friend, The Bee, who just broke up with her live-in guy.

First off, we had to wait in line, outside, in front of a young girl who was obviously hepped up on chrystal meth. I’ve personally never tried it. Because I’m a fuddy duddy. The worst I’ve ever done is pot, and I had a very bad experience on that a year and a half ago and haven’t touched it since. Listen to Nancy Rae-gun: Just say no, then go, and tell someone you trust.

Once we were inside, I realized that I was wearing too many clothes. These crazy kids nowadays – I can’t believe how they dress. Everything was tube top, tank top, low-rise – boobs and guts everywhere. And they have all these tattoos – not just cute little subtle ones anymore. These little petite girls are running around with massive tats covering their arms, backs, and all sorts of weird piercings that stretch out their ears in disturbing ways – not to mention their noses, eyebrows, tongues, lips – you name it. And those are the ones you can actually see. God knows what’s under those low-rise jeans.

I used to go to the bar and cruise for guys all the time. But now, I can’t even look at them because I feel dirty. Because they are sooo young. I probably baby-sat some of them back in the day. My baby cousin goes to the bar now, which is just weird. And the guys there are even younger than him.

The few times I tried to look at the guys at The Numbers Bar, I felt like a red flashing light and siren were going to go off, and my name was going to be added to the SexualPredatorRegistry™ or something. Better to keep your head down and not chance it.

While I’m keeping my head down, I am hit on by the immigrant guy looking for a blonde Canadian wife with birthing hips. This happens to me a lot. I am a magnet for men who can barely speak English and who want to have Canadian babies. Why me? I would be the antithesis of the obedient wife. And I don’t clean. Or cook. And I certainly don’t birth babies. Really.

Back to the crazy kids – you should see how they dance. The dance floor is a sea of gyrating bodies miming obscene sexual acts. Everyone’s dryhumping everyone else. I don’t think my body moves that way anymore. So, I decided to try some of my bellydance moves to attempt to fit in. It went something like this: figure eight, hip circle left, hip circle right, twist, shimmy. But I wasn’t doing that while wrapping my leg around The Bee, so I didn’t fit in.

We ended up leaving at 12:30 p.m., because I couldn’t stop yawning. It was way past my bedtime.

Tweaked-out chrystal meth girl was outside crying by my car. We gave her a ride home because we thought if we didn't, her decomposed body would be found in an alley a few weeks later. Fortunately, she didn’t stab us in the back of the head, though she did try to make us take her to some weird party on the other side of the city.

I think from now on, I will stick to the dive karaoke bars.

Labels: sketchy bars

I have the best dog in the whole world. You wouldn’t know it to look at her. She’s quite pathetic, really. A shi shi foo foo lap dog mutant of inbreeding who would never survive in the wild. Actually, she barely survives in my house. She has such little body fat and fur that she has to wear a sweater, even indoors, or she shivers and shakes like she has Parkinson’s or something.

Side note: It killed me, absolutely killed me to buy that doggie sweater. I’m not the kind of person who accessorizes her dog. I’m not even the kind of person to have a designer dog. I’m really more of a cat person. I inherited her because I’m a sucker for abused animals. Did I mention the dog has a damaged psyche? She was abused when she was a puppy and is now terrified of large men with dark hair. It’s kind of sad when my friend C comes over, because he absolutely loves dogs, but mine whimpers and twitches in a corner whenever he’s around.

Back to the dog – she’s kind of useless. She thinks she’s a cat – lies around and sleeps all day. I usually view her as more of a roommate than anything. A really rude roommate who eats my garbage and has a disturbing taste for used sanitary napkins. But she has endeared herself to me on a few occasions.

The first was just a few months after I inherited her from a friend who had to move away. She couldn’t leave the dog with just anyone, because the pup’s psyche was so damaged that she was terrified of all men. She was concerned that the dog wouldn’t be safe with some of her other friends, who tend to date assholes. And while I’ve dated my share of assholes, none of them are the kind of assholes who would ever hit another living creature. They’re more jerks than anything. So, I took the dog. And within months almost killed her.

I left a bottle of @dvil on the kitchen table. The cats weren’t impressed about their new roommate, so I think they hatched a plan to do her in. They must have knocked the bottle off the table, the dog got ahold of it and unscrewed the top, and proceeded to eat 50 pills.

I came home to a designer dog stoned on some not-very-designer drugs. She had thrown up everywhere and was stumbling around with glazed eyes. I thought she would die for sure. All I could think was – "I don’t date assholes, but I am a dog murderer. That's so much better." After calling the emergency vet hotline, I ran from house to house in HoodLite™, asking my neighbours if they had any peroxide, because the vet said that we had to make her drink that so she’d throw up more of the drugs. One of my neighbours actually came over to help me funnel peroxide down the poor dog’s throat. What a great way to meet new people in the neighbourhood. Good times.

She ended up with bleeding stomach ulcers and I had to shove antibiotics and other drugs down her throat for weeks, but she made it. No one believed it, because she looks like such a pathetic, frail thing, but she’s pretty tough underneath all that pretension.

She impressed me again the other day. My cat went missing. I woke up one morning, and he was just gone. Which is odd, because the cats aren’t allowed outside. I figured he must have snuck out the night before when I came home. I tried to find him but was late for work. It really stressed me out, because my cats are almost as wussy as my dog. Almost, but not quite.

So, I went to work, stressed out, not knowing what to do. Called the animal rescue agency and they told me they found a dead grey cat that night. Fortunately, he had a different tattoo number. But distressing, nonetheless, because it made me think of the worst that could happen to my wussy baby.

Then, I heard this voice in my head say, “Go home at lunch and your dog will find your cat.” I know they say you should probably not listen to the weird voices in your head, but this one wasn’t telling me to burn anything, so I thought it was alright to follow. It was an odd thought, because, as we’ve established, my dog=useless. Can’t even retrieve her own tail. But I went.

I thought I could maybe take the dog for a walk around the hood, and she’d sniff the cat out or something. When I got home, she wanted to go out really badly, so I let her out in the backyard. Literally two minutes later, I hear my non-missing cat hissing at the door. I turn around, and there is the dog and the missing cat, sitting on the step together.

I don’t know how she did it, but she got lots of treats that night.

Labels: pets

When I first bought my house, my neighbours thought I got ripped off. I had paid about $15,000 more than what they thought homes on our street were worth. But the reality was that I had paid the fair market price for my house – in fact, a little less. Part of the problem was their attitude toward our neighbourhood – they couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live here, much less pay that price to do so.

We’re in a transitional neighbourhood – between two worlds. On one side is “tha hood” and on the other is a nice working class neighbourhood. I like to call where we are HoodLite™. We’re on the cusp of something. And while I believe the yard is half landscaped, my neighbours believe it’s half overgrown.

I moved here because I believe the only way we can turn around inner city neighbourhoods is for young professionals to move in and take good care of the properties there – and keep the slumlords out. (Doesn’t that sound noble? In reality, buying a house here meant my mortgage was cheaper than rent. But the first reason sounded better, didn’t it?)

I really do believe my neighbourhood is turning around. A lot of young people are buying homes here because it’s affordable. New houses are springing up all over the place because the taxes are cheap and there are incentives to build. I told my neighbours this when I moved in, and they laughed at me. They seriously thought I was smoking something to pay what I did.

Then, something happened that made me feel vindicated. There was this empty lot at the end of the street. It sat vacant, overgrown with weeds, for the first four years I was here. Then, this winter, I came home one day and there was a big hole in the middle of the yard. The next day, there was a foundation. Practically overnight, half of a house appeared – framed, filled in – all but the roof.

My neighbour actually came up to me and said, “Wow, we thought you were on crack when you said this neighbourhood was turning around. But you were right – look at that!”

It felt really good to see that house go up. But then, it stopped.

Weeks went by. Months. More months. And nothing. No roof. No windows. No siding. Nothing. It just sits there, half-built, taunting us with its potential. What was once this symbol of hope for us all just sits there as a reminder of what we could be, but aren’t – yet, anyway.

They say it’s half started. I say it’s half finished.

Labels: HoodLite

This description totally freaks me out. How is it that some random Web site gets to tell me who I am...and gets it pretty damn close at that?

I was reading through it going: yup, uh, so true, tell me about it...hey! self-centered???!!!!

I pondered that one for awhile. How on earth could I be self-centered? I'm the kind of person who thinks about other people a lot. I think about their feelings. I try to do little things that will make their day better. I think about their birthdays for months before they occur just so that I can buy them the absolute perfect gift. But I wonder if that's just a disguise for being really self-centered? Maybe I'm doing it for my own purposes - so I they'll appreciate me and look at me and validate me? It feels pretty damn good when people like you, right?

I think there's another kind of self-centeredness, one that probably describes me better, though. I live inside my head. I'm constantly thinking, and analyzing, and feeling. I sometimes forget that there are other people around me as a result.

I remember, back in the day, The Homemaker and I used to go to the Checkered Bar and dance. Every weekend, they would hold these dance contests and award the best dancer with a free pitcher of beer. I always entered these contests and was determined to win. I didn't even drink beer - it was just the principle of it. I like winning. Plus, then I could give the beer away to my friends, so it was win, win.

All I was aware of was the music. It flowed through my body and I became an extension of the beat. I didn't look or talk to the person I was dancing with. I didn't notice anyone else watching me. I didn't even always know what my body was doing at any given moment. I was just there in my groove, possessed by some unseen force.

Looking back, I feel for The Homemaker. She was unable to block out the world like I did. She saw me, and she saw everyone staring at me. It was quite the show - a show she didn't necessarily want to be a part of. She was pretty horrified much of the time. I'm not sure why she put up with it, really. She's a good friend. And for the record, I won four of those dance contests, thank you very much.

But you know what? The sure sign that you have a tendency to be somewhat self-centered is the fact that you just wrote a whole entry analyzing the ways in which you may be self-centered.

Labels: meme, narcissism

1. Get a master’s degree
2. Complete my Grade 10 Singing, Royal Conservatory of Music
3. Learn Italian
4. Lose 30 pounds
5. Pay off my insanely large debts
6. Actually save some money so I can live in the good retirement home, and not one of those corrupt ones featured on 20/20
7. Travel Europe, and see all the sights in Italy
8. Visit a concentration camp in eastern Europe
9. Run part of a marathon
10. Learn to run so I can run part of that damn marathon
11. Get my fucked up jaw fixed so I can chew my food like a normal human being
12. Quit putting my foot in my mouth – for gawds sake already! (Hey - maybe that's why my jaw is fucked!)
13. Meet a straight guy with no baggage who likes music and culture and who doesn’t piss me off and annoy me to no end, and who doesn’t have issues with commitment or want to marry his mother or any other fucked up shit like that.
14. Get some realistic goals for my life.

Labels: goals

Scene: A dive karaoke bar where police recruits like to hang out. Saviabella is wearing knee-high brown leather boots.

Police Recruit: (stroking the boots) These are awesome boots.

Saviabella: Thanks

PR: Do you like to dominate?

S: (flippantly, because she likes to throw people off) Sure.

PR: Really??

S: Um...sure....

PR: Everyday, during the week, I'm an authority figure. I walk around carrying a gun and a baton. But when the weekend comes...I just want to be spanked.

S: Oh....

Labels: sex, sketchy bars

Every few months, I am struck with the urge to rid myself of my worldly possessions. I’m finally at that place in my life where I can afford things for my house that actually match my style, and are not hand-me-downs from when we had to put my grandmother in the old folks home. So, every time I get something new, I take my old stuff to the Outreach Centre. I like taking my things there, because unlike the Village of Values, which makes a profit off the things I donate, the centre gives things directly to the people who need them. The centre is where people go when they’ve run out of money for the month, and the food bank has turned them away. Some of them really do have nothing, so when I take things there, I know that people really appreciate it.

The centre is in a dodgy neighbourhood downtown. It’s also just around the corner from one of the nicest hotels in my city. I remember about nine years ago, some friends and I spent the night dancing at that hotel bar, Ladeedahs. At 2 a.m., we went out to my car and witnessed an aboriginal woman being beaten by a man that she knew – a boyfriend, her pimp? – in a bus shelter. He seemed intoxicated and was throwing her against the thick glass walls and she was screaming at the top of her lungs. It was unlike anything I had ever heard – like a caged animal, shrieking, inhuman.

We just stood there, frozen. We had never seen anything like that before and didn’t know what to do. They didn’t even notice us standing there, watching, only a few yards away. We were in totally different worlds.

I ran. Ran to the back door of the club. Locked. Ran to the side, where I thought there would be payphones. Nope. Finally, frustrated and with tears streaming down my face, I stormed the front entrance of the ritzy hotel, pushed past the people in line at the desk and yelled at the clerk, “Call 911. There’s a woman being beaten.”

We drove around the block. They were sitting quietly in the bus shelter. She was crying. I could see the ambulance and the police car approaching in my rearview mirror and I knew that she would be okay. It was one of the few times in my life that I felt I had made a difference in someone’s life. Maybe she went back to him the next day, but for that night, she was safe. To this day, I don’t know if my friends would have done anything if I hadn’t.

I felt the same thing yesterday, though not on such a dramatic scale. I went to the Outreach Centre to unload my yuppie car of my no-longer stylish possessions: a comforter, sheets, towels, a shower curtain, a purse that it turned out that everyone in the damn city owns, some wire hangers, and two lamps. As I was unloading the trunk, an aboriginal man came out of the centre.

“Do you need some help?” he asked.

“Sure, if you could,” I replied.

“Those are nice lamps. I don’t have anything in my apartment.”

“Why don’t you take them, then?”

Looking over his shoulder at the people inside the centre, “I don’t know. I should probably ask them first.”

“Well, they’re my lamps, and I’m giving them to you. How about that?”

He smiled. “The only thing is that I’m on my bike, so I can’t take them. I wish I could though. I really need some lamps.”

“Where do you live?”

“Just two blocks from here.”

“How about we unload this other stuff and I’ll just drop the lamps off at your house?”

“Okay. You’d really do that?”

“Sure.”

We took the other items inside. The people inside the centre thanked me, and reprimanded him about taking the lamps: “You shouldn’t do that. You should let them come inside first.”

He told me where he lived, and we put the lamps in my back seat. At the last minute, he tossed his shoulder bag in my car as well. It was as though we had known each other for years or something – such a trusting gesture. Here was someone who had nothing, and just casually left one of his few possessions with a total stranger. For all he knew, I could take off, never to be seen again.

Mind you, for all I knew, I was just about to get knifed. As I drove the two blocks to his house, my paranoid side started kicking in. “What the hell are you doing?” I tucked my purse under my legs and locked my doors. “What good is that going to do, really? If you’re going to get stabbed, you’re going to get stabbed. And don’t even think about taking off – his bag’s in your car.”

He was just arriving as I drove up to his appartment. I unlocked the back door and he unloaded the lamps.

“Thank you so much,” he said, shaking my hand.

“You’re welcome. I’m glad I could help.”

“What’s your name?”

I told him.

“My name’s James,” he said, shaking my hand again.

“I can’t use my arm. I had to have surgery. See – this is where they connected my tendons,” he said, showing me the scars on the top and bottom of his left wrist.

“Oh?”

“I was walking out of the bar one night and this guy came up behind me and stabbed me in the back and arm – three times.”

“Oh.”

“Thanks again for the lamps. I really needed them,” he said, shaking my hand for the third time.

As I watched him walk away with the lamps, I wished I had taken a lint brush to the shades to get rid of the cat hair, and had been just a little more careful when I had loaded them into the trunk of my car that morning. I felt sad, and wished I could have done more. But I knew that, at the very least, James had light that night, and it was because of me.

Labels: misc

I admit it. I'm a reality TV junkie. Strike that. I'm a connoisseur. A nibble here, a nosh there. None of that Bachelor/Bachelorette or Wife Swap nonsense. I go for the gold - Survivor, the Amazing Race, the Apprentice.

Only the cream of the crap for me, yesserie Barb.

What amazes me most about these shows is how much religion is involved. The contestants are constantly praying to God or are talking to the camera about how God has helped them get ahead.

"I know God wants me to win this race.".

"St.Andrew, please help us with this task.".

"Blah, blah, God, blah, blah."

With the wars raging on in all parts of the world, the AIDS epidemic, poverty, and that fingernail I broke yesterday, do these people actually believe that God has time to answer the prayers of contestants on contrived reality television shows?

No, wait. Maybe there's more to this. After a long, hard day of seeing babies die and people torture and murder each other in cold blood, God is just tired and needs some brain candy. He flips on his TiVo and watches the Amazing Race. The fact that people as famous as Robbe and Ambear are talking him up on such a highly rated show makes him feel pretty special, and he appreciates the positive PR. He throws some good luck their way, and everyone's just a little bit happier. Because those problems are easy to solve.

Or maybe there's an actual God of Reality TV. An apprentice god - a trainee really - who needs to cut his teeth on something insignificant before tackling the greater issues of the world. He gets to practice playing god with the peons of the "reality" world.

And that's why your favourite singer never wins on American Idol.

Labels: misc

When I told Friend with Funky Glasses that the Impossibly Big Ass Choir was performing the Joyful Ode, she said that she had never cared for that song because it was so militaristic.

Once she said that, I just couldn't look at it the same way again. (Friend with Funky Glasses always has very profound things to say. We like her.)

And then it occurred to me. Those of us who sing, or play an instrument view ourselves as creative, free spirits, independent thinkers. But there is nothing creative about music.

Sure, the person who wrote the piece of music was very creative. But once that music is down on paper, it becomes oppressive for those performing it.

To sing, you must count. 1-2-3-4. You must hit that pitch in the centre of the note. You must sing that note at exactly the right time, in unison with the others, or you are Wrong.

If you are Wrong, everyone turns and looks at you with contempt. How dare you rebel against the group? You are a Bad Singer.

We stand in rows at attention. Watching the man with the baton who counts the time. 1-2-3-4. When he points at us, we sing. When he closes his hand, we stop. We are told to smile. We do. We are even told when we are allowed to breathe. We obey.

Music isn't creativity. Music is conformity.

Still, it was pretty cool when everyone in the crowd gave us that standing ovation.

Labels: bellydancing

When I told Friend with Funky Glasses that the Impossibly Big Ass Choir was performing the Joyful Ode, she said that she had never cared for that song because it was so militaristic.

Once she said that, I just couldn't look at it the same way again. (Friend with Funky Glasses always has very profound things to say. We like her.)

And then it occurred to me. Those of us who sing, or play an instrument view ourselves as creative, free spirits, independent thinkers. But there is nothing creative about music.

Sure, the person who wrote the piece of music was very creative. But once that music is down on paper, it becomes oppressive for those performing it.

To sing, you must count. 1-2-3-4. You must hit that pitch in the centre of the note. You must sing that note at exactly the right time, in unison with the others, or you are Wrong.

If you are Wrong, everyone turns and looks at you with contempt. How dare you rebel against the group? You are a Bad Singer.

We stand in rows at attention. Watching the man with the baton who counts the time. 1-2-3-4. When he points at us, we sing. When he closes his hand, we stop. We are told to smile. We do. We are even told when we are allowed to breathe. We obey.

Music isn't creativity. Music is conformity.

Still, it was pretty cool when everyone in the crowd gave us that standing ovation.

Labels: performance

Beethoven needed a sassy second soprano to smack him up side the head and show him what's what.

Does that sound harsh? I've just returned from three hours of singing "Ode to Joy" with the Impossibly Big Ass Choir, and let me tell you - not feeling so joyful.

Judging from the music, I'm convinced that Beethoven was a misanthropist. The vocal parts are written so high that I actually saw one of the tenors performing a castration on himself just to be able to hit the notes. It was kind of messy. All that blood put a bit of a kink in the rehearsal, but the show must go on, so we did.

The soprano part is seriously nuts - except we don't have any that we can cut off in order to hit the high As that go on for 12 pages at a time. The diva sopranos are revelling in their screetchyness (think of a dog whistle being scratched across a chalkboard, and you just about have it - no, wait - make it slightly flat. Now you've got it).

And me, well, I've embraced my inner alto. We get along just fine, as long as she doesn't get too chatty. She can be such a catty bitch sometimes.

The other bitterness that I have toward this Joyful Ode is that it must be belted. In fact, if your belt doesn't fly off and bean one of the violin players in the back of the head, you're not singing loud enough.

The Maestro stated that the desired effect would not be accomplished unless we all collapsed in a dead faint at the end of the piece, with shards of vocal chords bursting forth and floating to earth like some kind of pink, wet, mooshy confetti.

Well, I think I can handle that one, Maestro dear.

Labels: performance